MAXI (ISS Experiment)


The Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image use several highly sensitive X-ray detectors, including the Gas Slit Camera and the Solid-state Slit Camera, located at the Equipment Exchange Unit site 1 on the Japanese Experiment Module - Exposed Facility, aboard the International Space Station.

History

MAXI was developed by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Tsukuba, Japan, and is designed to continuously monitor X-ray sources and variability as the International Space Station orbits Earth. It was launched in 2009.
MAXI conducts a full sky survey every 96 minutes searching for variations in X-ray sources.
MAXI helped discover the rapidly rotating black-hole/star system MAXI J1659-152.

Discoveries

MAXI has been in operation for several years and has made several x-ray photos of nebulae and space objects while being stationed on the ISS.

iWF-MAXI

iSEEP Wide-Field MAXI is a follow-on instrument to the current MAXI. Compared with MAXI, which can only monitor 2% of the celestial sphere instantaneously, iWF-MAXI is always capable of monitoring 10%, and can monitor up to 80% in 92 minutes. iWF-MAXI will utilize the i-SEEP bus, an exposure adapter for middle-sized payloads in JEM-EF. Chosen as an ISAS Mission of Opportunity in 2015, iWF-MAXI is currently targeted to begin observation at the ISS by 2019.